Objections descended on me like a swarm of flies. I felt a terrible sting within, then saw the gerbil attached to my chest. “Be careful who you trust,” Joshua had said to me. Could I really trust the Woodsman? “Things aren’t what they appear.” Maybe the Woodsman wasn’t who he appeared to be. Maybe he only wanted to get me over the chasm so he could push me off the tree.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I don’t think I’m ready.”

“I have done what was necessary. I have made my choice—now you must make yours.”

“Exactly … who are you?” I asked.

“I am the source of your life and of your dreams. I am the dream itself buried deep within you. But be warned—to those who do not embrace the dream, I become the nightmare.”

“Then, did I see you before I came to this world?”

“There are fleeting moments when all image-bearers catch glimpses of the eternal. In those moments, it was me you saw, me you longed for.” He paused. “Yet you have only now begun to see me clearly—and there is much about me you still do not see. Do you have something to say to me, Nick?”

I sat quietly for several minutes, then cleared my throat, both eager to talk and dreading it.

“I used to be so sure of myself, certain I wasn’t to blame, that whatever went wrong, it was someone else’s fault—Marci’s, Amy’s, Brian’s, my father’s, my coworkers’, the church’s. And maybe … yours, though I didn’t know it was you. I feel now like all my life I’ve been no more than a little country, surrounded on the north, south, east, and west with nothing but myself, full of self-deception and self-pity and self-preoccupation.”

The Woodsman looked at me, nodding, but waiting as if I must say more. I rehearsed to him every offense, every failing, everything I could think of—everything from pride and arrogance to lust and greed and failure to be the man my wife and children needed. It took a long time, because the more I said the more my eyes were opened to what I’d never seen before. Each confession led to the next like falling dominoes.

Finally I said, “That’s all I can think of for now. But there must be many other wrongs I’ve done.”

“Yes,” he said, “and in time I will show them to you, so at last you may be free of them.”

I shuddered, wondering what he was thinking of. Quietly he took my hand, and we walked to the tree. I looked down at the abyss and felt my face twitch and sweat drip from my forehead to my cheeks.

“What if I fall?” I asked him.